Greetings to all-

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 17:21, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote:

* I find the standard gnome panel at the bottom of the screen very
clunky, because it fills up a large part of the screen. (I know I can
auto hide it or make it smaller.)  I find smaller panel (or 2 panels)
like they use in ximian desktop See:
http://www.ximian.com/images/screenshots/desktop/browsing-windows-network.png
looking much more modern
I agree the Ximian desktop looks nice. Still- guessing how users will set up their desktop is hit or miss. Mine ends up looking nothing like Fedora or Ximian. If anything, I believe the targeted audience should be new converts to Linux in general, who will be looking for some familiarity. So keeping a Windows or Mac type feel helps give the uninitiated user clues about what is where. Right now Fedora leans toward a Windows look, IMO. Which is likely where you will see the most converts coming from. It's clean, simple and straightforward. I put my 11 year old daughter in front of it- and she went right to work.

Maybe what would be helpful is some simple tutorials linked from a fresh desktop that show the user how to change things. Teach them to customize their desktop, and how it looks to start off with is almost irrelevant.


* I find the menus Preferences, System Settings and System tools quite
confusing. They contain many similar menu items and  if you would make a
quiz show in which of the three a certain setting should be set, I think
the average user would not do that well.
I'd like to suggest to have one "Configuration" (or whatever what you
want to call it) menu, where you have two sections: user preferences
(which sets options for the current user that is logged in) and system
preferences (for setting system wide settings for which you need to be
or become root)

I agree with you here. Every distro I've seen has fairly cluttered menus. The sheer number of apps available is staggering. I prefer the stock Gnome menu myself- it's rather straightforward. I'd advocate removing as much as possible from the menus, and where possible simplifying the categories. Again- targeting the convert, not the experienced user.

Jon
Parkton, NC, USA